BigCommerce notified sellers who use its email-hosting service that it is discontinuing it at the end of the month. A spokesperson said BigCommerce made the decision to focus on its role as ecommerce platform now that there are numerous email-hosting options available to sellers that are affordable, and she said the move would impact a small percentage of merchants.
A reader sent Ecommerce the notice they received this week:
BigCommerce is sunsetting its native email hosting as of June 1, 2019.
In order to provide a better user experience to our merchants, BigCommerce is sunsetting its native email hosting as of June 1, 2019.
Why the change?
Allocating our resources to advancing the infrastructure and store features that help you grow is our top priority as an ecommerce platform. Today, the affordable email hosting options that exist for merchants include an expanded array of features that only a platform solely focused on email hosting can provide. With this change, you’ll be able to take advantage of leading email tools that can help improve your business objectives.
The company spokesperson told us that BigCommerce had already stopped including email hosting services with new merchant accounts in 2016, “so only a very small percentage of legacy merchants will be impacted by this recent decision.”
She explained that when BigCommerce launched in 2009, there were fewer email hosting services available. “At the time, it made sense to package that functionality as part of our holistic offering. Today, there are a number of affordable email hosting options that offer an expanded array of features that only a dedicated email hosting platform can provide.”
“Ultimately, BigCommerce is an ecommerce platform, not an email hosting provider, and we felt that our merchants would be better served if we allocated our resources to advancing the infrastructure and store features that help them grow. At the end of the day, their continued success is our top priority,” she said.
BigCommerce advises that merchants who are impacted by the change migrate to email providers such as Google, GoDaddy or Zoho that offer industry-leading features, such as advanced spam filtering, dedicated support and two-factor authentication. “In addition, we’ve provided impacted merchants a step-by-step guide to walk them through the process of selecting and migrating to a new hosting provider in advance of the June 1 deadline,” the spokesperson said.
That’s lazy. How hard is it to leave an SMTP port open and a webmail interface installed? Not as easy as dumping clients with a month’s notice but still.
Are they lowering prices or is this just a stealth fee hike?
Went through this when Verizon stopped cold.
Fortunately, it’s fairly simple to change over.
But it is a rude awakening……